When it comes to predicting how President-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration will affect America’s schools and universities, education experts say they are struggling to read the tea leaves.

“The fundamental issue is that nobody really knows what the Trump administration is about” on education, said Frederick M. Hess, a conservative education policy expert. At a panel discussion in Washington last week, he joked that Mr. Trump’s trademark educational achievement thus far, creating the controversial Trump University, placed him in history alongside another president, Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the University of Virginia.

“He’s been all over the map on a number of these questions,” Mr. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute, said during a panel discussion on Wednesday at the Shanker Institute, an education nonprofit.

Mr. Hess is among education experts and policy makers who, since the election, have been trying to figure out what a Trump administration might do for education — starting with whether there will even be a federal Department of Education. Mr. Trump suggested during the campaign that the agency might be on the chopping block, though the statement seemed more like a sound bite than a policy pronouncement.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump’s statements on education were largely like that: a series of short clips, some seemingly contradictory. And it is not clear whether his policies will hew closely to the Republican agenda or fall more in line with his populist streak.

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Seventh-grade students taking part in a trial run of a state assessment test on laptops at Annapolis Middle School in Maryland in February 2015.CreditPatrick Semansky/Associated Press

Mr. Trump’s signature education proposal — to provide $20 billion in federal money to allow low-income students to select private or charter schools — is one area where he seems to be borrowing policy from Vice President-elect Mike Pence. As governor of Indiana, Mr. Pence championed school choice and favored a smaller federal role in education.

While arguing that Mr. Trump should be taken seriously on education because he wants to cut college costs and improve schools, Mr. Hess said Mr. Trump’s pronouncements so far were not based on fully formed policy.

“The $20 billion figure for school choice came out of nowhere,” Mr. Hess said. “You know that Mr. Trump has been all over the place on student loans.”

A number of names have been floated as possible choices for education secretary. Mr. Trump met over the weekend with Michelle Rhee, a former District of Columbia schools chancellor, a Democrat who reversed her opposition to school vouchers in 2013 and has supported Common Core standards.

Another possible candidate is Williamson M. Evers, an education expert at the Hoover Institution, a think tank. Mr. Evers was a senior adviser at the Education Department during President George W. Bush’s administration.

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Opponents of a North Carolina law regulating students’ use of bathrooms and locker rooms protested in Raleigh in April.CreditRay Whitehouse for The New York Times

Mr. Trump’s office has not responded to requests for interviews on his education priorities, but he and people close to him have dropped a few clues. Here is an overview of what America’s schools and universities might expect during the Trump administration:

K-to-12 Education

SCHOOL CHOICE In a speech at a Cleveland charter school in September, Mr. Trump rolled out the banner element in his education plan — the $20 billion program to promote “school choice.” Along with the federal money, states also would be encouraged to kick dollars into a pool so that low-income children could select their schools, including private and charter schools.

Representative Luke Messer, an Indiana Republican who founded the Congressional School Choice Caucus and is friends with Mr. Pence, suggested in an interview that some of the money for Mr. Trump’s school choice program could come from Title 1, a $15 billion education program for low-income schools. But critics say letting Title 1 money follow students to higher-income schools outside their neighborhoods, referred to in education speak as Title 1 portability, would take money away from public schools.

Teachers unions have opposed the idea of expanding funding for charter schools. “There is a real question about resources being drained from public education,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

COMMON CORE In an interview with Fox News in October last year, Mr. Trump said: “I may cut Department of Education. I believe Common Core is a very bad thing.” The statement, though, may have reflected a bit of a misunderstanding.

Common Core standards, an initiative to standardize educational requirements throughout the nation, were adopted by states. Under a recently enacted law, the federal government is prohibited from telling states what educational standards to adopt. So the Department of Education has no authority over Common Core anyway.

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Baylor students and graduates held a candlelight vigil outside the home of the university’s president, Kenneth W. Starr, in Waco, Tex., in February to draw attention to the school’s policy on sexual assault.CreditRod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune Herald, via Associated Press

TRANSGENDER FACILITIES The Obama administration has taken the position that schools must permit transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of their choice. The Republican platform calls that policy illegal and dangerous.

But in a television interview in April, Mr. Trump said transgender people should go to any restroom they want. Caitlyn Jenner took him up on the invitation.

Higher Education

STUDENT DEBT In a speech in Columbus, Ohio, last month, Mr. Trump called college debt an “albatross” around people’s necks, and suggested a way out. Students would pay 12.5 percent of their income each year for 15 years. After that, their loans could be forgiven.

But there is already a similar program, currently requiring payment of 10 percent of income over 20 years. Jason D. Delisle, also of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Trump’s repayment plan would cost the government more and would give a huge break to students with higher student debt, usually those with advanced degrees.

There has been some thought that Mr. Trump plans to turn student lending over to private banks and take the government out of the equation. But there is no evidence that Mr. Trump has endorsed that idea.

Both liberal and conservative experts said the proposal would be dead on arrival on Capitol Hill anyway. “It would cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars,” said Rohit Chopra, a former adviser to Education Secretary John B. King Jr. as well as Hillary Clinton’s defunct transition team. The president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Peter McPherson, who was a deputy Treasury secretary during the Reagan administration, also called the proposal “politically untenable” because of its cost.

CAMPUS SEXUAL ASSAULT Mr. Trump has said there is “tremendous bloat” in college costs, blaming that partly on highly paid administrators. He has also suggested cutting expensive regulations, though he has not said which ones. One target, though, may be regulations concerning campus sexual assault complaints under Title IX, the federal law that governs gender equity in education.

The Obama administration has stepped up enforcement of Title IX on campuses, sending universities across the country scrambling to comply and to hire staff members to do so. Some experts believe that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which administers those rules, may face cuts.

“Many of the people who Trump will be talking to believe that the Office for Civil Rights has been overreaching, it’s been too aggressive and it’s time to pull back,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former New York sex crimes prosecutor who currently teaches law at Northwestern University.

Reduced emphasis on policing campus sexual assault would probably create an outcry among a well-organized network of activists who oppose violence against women on campuses. But Mr. McPherson of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities predicted that universities will continue to address campus sexual assault — with or without federal enforcement. “Every president I talk to says this is something that needs to be fully dealt with,” he said. “The public visibility of this issue has transferred the responsibility, the ownership, to campuses themselves.”

ENDOWMENTS Mr. Trump has said that universities should spend more of their endowments on students rather than investing the money. He suggested that some colleges pay more to financial advisers to manage their endowments than they spend on tuition assistance. University endowments currently hold more than $500 billion.

In recent years, various lawmakers have proposed cutting tax breaks to universities unless they spend more of their endowments. But most of the colleges with large endowments — like Harvard, Yale and Stanford — already give needy students generous aid. There are 92 universities with endowments of $1 billion or more, with half of the wealth controlled by about two dozen schools, so forcing colleges to spend more of their endowments would likely have limited national impact.

Correction:

An article on Tuesday about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s position on education issues rendered imprecisely the name of the association run by Peter McPherson, who commented on some proposals. It is the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, neither American nor Colleges is part of the name.

Correction:

An article on Nov. 22 about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s position on education issues misstated the number of universities with endowments of $1 billion or more. It is 92, not 24. This correction was delayed because the error came to the attention of editors only recently.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s Views on Student Debt, Common Core and Other Education Issues. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe